1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to tape winding apparatus and, more particularly, is directed to a tape winding apparatus suitable for a so-called video cassette loader in which a copy tape is drawn out from a pancake reel around which the copy tape in which a plurality of video softwares of the same content, for example, are copied and wound and accommodated within a video cassette.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional apparatus known as video cassette loaders have been proposed so far, in which a pancake reel around which a copy tape in which a plurality of video softwares of the same content are copied is loaded on a reel base, the copy tape is automatically drawn out from the pancake reel loaded onto the reel base and the copy tape of one video soft is automatically accommodated within the video cassette.
Such video cassette loaders can make 100 video cassettes, for example, from one pancake reel. The pancake reel, from which copy tapes are fully wound, is removed from the reel base of the video cassette loader in a manual fashion and a new pancake is loaded onto the reel base in a manual fashion, whereby a new video tape can be automatically wound around a video cassette according to the video cassette loader.
In order to interrupt the winding work, two video cassette loaders are generally prepared, wherein while the pancake reel is being exchanged by one video cassette loader, another video cassette loader is operated, i.e., winds the video tape.
According to the conventional technique in which two video cassette loaders are simultaneously driven as described above, the volume of magnetic tape that the video cassette loaders handle is increased. Also, the two video cassette loaders are independently driven. There is then the disadvantage such that timings at which the pancake reels are exchanged become coincident.
As a conventional technique that can solve the aforesaid problem, there has been proposed a tape winding apparatus which is described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 64-33783.
FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings shows a front view of a tape winding apparatus according to the prior art.
As shown in FIG. 1, two reel bases 2, 3 are provided on the same plane within a housing 1 and pancake reels 4, 5 are respectively loaded on to the reel bases 2, 3. When this tape winding apparatus is in use, a magnetic tape 6 is taken out from any one of the pancake reels 4 and 5 and a magnetic tape 6 thus taken-out is wound around the reels of an empty cassette 7 in the directions shown by arrows A and B.
According to the conventional technique show in FIG. 1, however, since the pancake reels 4 and 5 are provided on the same plane, the volume of one winding apparatus is as a result increased comparatively so that the tape winding apparatus become difficult to operate. In addition, by the increase of the number of pancake reels then not only the size of the apparatus is increased but also the strength of the apparatus or the like must be sufficient. There is then the disadvantage that the manufacturing cost thereof is considerably increased.
Further, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 63-83983 describes a tape automatic winding apparatus. According to this tape automatic winding apparatus, in order to splice a tape top portion at the end of the new pancake reel to a tape end of the copy tape that is wound around the preceding pancake reel side by a splicing apparatus, the tape top portion is taken out from the pancake reel to the splicing apparatus in a manual fashion.
After the tape top portion was taken out in a manual fashion, the tape top portion and the end portion of the copy tape are automatically spliced with each other, whereafter a copy tape wrapped around the new pancake reel is again wound around the empty cassette.
According to the above conventional technique, since the tape top portion of the new pancake reel is pulled out to the splicing apparatus in a manual fashion, it takes a lot of time to do such work, which as a result needs sufficient additional time for the winding work of the tape winding apparatus. Consequently, the serviceability ratio of the tape automatic winding apparatus is lowered.
FIG. 2 of the accompanying drawings shows a front view of another example of the conventional tape winding apparatus. In FIG. 2, like parts corresponding to those of FIG. 1 are marked with the same references and therefore need not be described in detail.
As shown in FIG. 2, in this tape winding apparatus, two reel bases 2,3 are provided within the housing 1. Pancake reels 4, 5 are each loaded onto the reel bases 2, 3. When this tape winding apparatus is in use, the magnetic tape 6 is taken out from any one of the pancake reels 4 and 5 and wound into the empty cassette 7 along the direction shown by an arrow a.
In this case, the start portions of the pancake reels 4, 5 and the end portions of the pancake reel are unnecessary tapes which need not be wound into the empty cassette 7 and hence they must be discarded.
To this end, in the conventional tape winding apparatus shown in FIG. 2, an excess tape winding apparatus 8 is provided, in which the winding start portion or winding end portion of the magnetic tape 6 wrapped around the pancake reel 5 and a tape end portion 10a of an excess tape 10 wrapped around a tape waste reel 9 are spliced by a splicing apparatus (not shown) and then wound around the tape waste reel 9.
According to the above conventional tape winding apparatus, since the special excess tape winding apparatus 8 is provided, a special motor that rotates the tape waste reel 9 or the like is needed, which makes the tape winding apparatus expensive and large in size.
Furthermore, the tape waste reel 9 is of an open-reel type reel so that, when the excess tape is removed from the tape waste reel 9, magnetic powders are scattered, which becomes a serious problem in work within a so-called clean room.